Boat trippin'

Anni's sister Riikka and her boyfriend Mikko were clearly very surprised to hear us yelling their names in the airport instead of meeting them later in a hostel in Ao Nang. After recovering from the shock of actually seeing a person you know and missed much after so many months, we took the taxi to a previously booked hostel. It was the first time outside Europe for Mikko. Their backpacks were full of Finnish chocolate and salty liqourice candies and mint booze for us. How much we (especially Anni) had missed those things! Since they also generously paid our hostel for us, we took the role of being guides and studying nearby islands, where we would go to spend most of the two weeks after a few shopping days in the tourist hell Ao Nang.

It is easy to see why Ao Nang first became so popular. The place itself is absolutely beautiful with the green karst peaks rising behind the blue water and sandy beaches. Only the songthaew (a pickup truck with benches-kind of form of public transport) ride from Krabi to Ao Nang is breathtaking. It is also a great place to start island hopping, because of the short distances to the islands and to Krabi airport. But it definitely is not a place to relax anymore. Nowadays it is a place for overpriced - though still cheap compared to Europe - shopping and partying. Coming from the north of Thailand, it was a shock to see the rapid rise in prices. Normally we stay in hostels or bungalows that cost maximum 350 baht a night for the two of us, but in Ao Nang it was hard to find anything under 800. The small town is full of street markets, dive shops, restaurants, tour agencies, hostels and tailor shops. The persistency of people trying to sell all this gets tiring within minutes. However, it was a good base for planning the trip and having a couple of drinks with friends. We thought that Riikka and Mikko would need a few days to recover from the jet lag, after all, so why rush?

On the first day after the arrival we went to spend the day on Railay beach, a short longtail boat ride away from Ao Nang. Railay beach is famous for climbers and sun worshippers and all beach goers alike. We were lucky to be there just before the peak season starts, so the beach wasn't too crowded and it was easy to find a corner for our towels. We also climbed to a viewpoint on top of a hill to admire the surroundings and even saw monkeys on the way! Later we saw them again, this time stealing food from tourists who left their belongings unwatched on the beach. In the afternoon we took the longtail boat back to Ao Nang and already then we decided that we had had enough of that and decided to move on to the islands the next day.

 

In the morning we took a big ferry to Koh Phi Phi. It is probably one of the most famous islands in the Andaman coast. Ben had been there 7 years ago and was excited to see how it has changed over the years. Soon we learned that it for sure hadn't changed for the better. We kind of knew that before going, but chose to check it out anyway, mainly because it was on the way to the next islands. The talk about Phi Phi island being a great party island is true for sure, with the music pumping away into the morning hours. It just happens that we are too old for that constant noise and party, but we get why it's popular. The party also brings along the downside of paying too much for things and not getting much back. Our bungalow cost 800 and was not much more than a broken mosquito net over a mattress on the floor. The island itself is a beautiful one with an amazing viewpoint over the big sandy patch that connects two islands, but when you take a closer look, you'll notice that the beaches are full of shattered glass, beer bottles and other rubbish. The shower water from the bungalows runs straight to the ground and both tourists and locals don't seem to care too much about where to throw their cigarette butts. We just wonder how long it will last like this.

We booked a snorkeling trip to check out the local fishes, but we had to cancel it in the morning because both Riikka and Mikko were sick and had barely slept. The nice lady from the tour office got us most of our money back even though we cancelled only minutes before leaving. Instead of snorkeling we had a relaxed day and booked tickets for the next day to get the hell out of the noisy Phi Phi.

 

Our next destination was Koh Lanta. Lanta is a bigger island with plenty of choice for accommodation, so we did not book ahead. Insted we read about beaches, and came to conclusion that we will stay away from the main beach to be sure that we don't have to listen to this crappy dance music all night again. I mean you come to an island to hear the sound of waves, right? So we hopped on a taxi and went guesthouse-shopping. People usually try to get you to stay in their guesthouse as soon as you step on the boat towards the island, so we had already collected a few brochures. Soon enough we found bungalows both couples liked, a cheapie for Anni and Beni and a nicer one for Riikka and Mikko.

Koh Lanta was a good place for renting motorbikes/scooters and driving from one beach to the next. Roads were decent in Thai standards and the distances are so long that it makes renting your own transport worth it. We rented motorbikes twice, and on the second day we had already learned to take them for a short test drive before renting. The quality of the rent bikes seems to be based on luck more than anything else.On Lanta we drove around the island, visited a national park in the south of the island, checked out some new beaches and did some shopping.

A friend of Anni's also came for a quick visit. Tero is travelling for 2 months with his girlfriend, their baby and a few other family members. We had tried to organise a meeting since we knew that we are travelling around the same places, but we never really got a chance before this. We were just having dinner, when they came visit us, so they joined for a drink to catch up.

On Koh Lanta we also tried to find good places to go snorkelling, but the water was not the clearest at the moment so there wasn't much to see. Probably should have done a snorkelling trip by boat to get to the clear water. A nice island, but we could still find better ones, we thought, and booked the next tickets.

An hour's bum-numbing longtail boat ride away waited Koh Ngai, also known as Koh Hai. We had booked our accommodation ahead, because the island only has about 10 resorts, most of them ridiculously overpriced. When we talk about ridiculously overpriced, we mean paying at least 8 times over usual. We were lucky enough to find a basic, sea view bungalow for 900. But what a view that was! A perfect sandy beach with turquoise water, a dark reef drop-off and a few islands and karst peaks at the back, jungle to the other direction. We felt like we had finally arrived at the place we had been looking for.

The snorkelling was fantastic so it kept us busy for a few days. On the main beach there is great snorkelling, but also a lot of boat traffic in the afternoons, so we took a 20 minute hike (40 if you go to the wrong direction first) over the hill on a jungle path to the other side, and found an empty beach with an amazing reef full of fishes, moray eels and whatever you might be looking for while snorkelling. It was fantastic, but getting in and out from the beach is only easy during high tide, so we had to time our next visit to the place better next time. We also tried to get lunch from a nearby resort, called Paradise, which according to a lady from our hostel had a restaurant. Sure, there was one, it just was not open. Starving and exhausted after breakfast only and many hours of snorkelling, we dragged ourselves back through the jungle. Next day Riikka and Mikko took the easy approach of renting a kayak while Anni and Beni were in the money saving mode and decided to walk.

After a few days of getting up and close with the marine life and almost at the end of Riikka's and Mikko's two weeks, we left to see one more island. Koh Kradan was only 20 minutes away by speedboat, so we decided to go there for one night. Weather was not amazing and the prices were again more than on the last island with the quality of food and accommodation still dropping, so we were okay to leave the next day. We were sad though not to properly have time to check out the snorkelling, which seemed fantastic with a nice beach with a reef drop-off. We highly recommend if you're not on a tight budget.

 

So after one night it was time to finish our island hopping and head back to town. Our visitors' flight to Bangkok was going back from Krabi, so we decided to go back to Ao Nang for a night to say goodbyes and enjoy the last moments with them. We first took a boat to Trang, from where we took a minivan straight to Ao Nang. Our visitors got to see the inland a little bit and also experience the local culture more closely by trying to play with local babies that someone just hands over to you while being scared to death by the "skills" of the maniacs that call themselves drivers.

Against all expectations we did arrive in one piece in Ao Nang, and after a bit of a hassle with the guesthouses, we checked in to the same place we stayed the last time. We celebrated the last night with pizza, then went to bed to wake up the next day to say goodbyes. We had a great time with Riikka and Mikko, and we were sad to see them go, but happy that we had such good two weeks. But soon it was time to put our attention into planning new adventures.